Maria Morris, managing attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, announces a federal lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Corrections in Montgomery on June 17. (File)

By Maria Morris

In his recent guest article cautioning against reform of Alabama's prison system, state Sen. Scott Beason gets one thing right: Prisons are a tool to serve society by punishing offenders and keeping citizens safe from crime.

But then he engages in the same type of demagoguery that has led to the toxic mess our nation now faces: a bloated, outdated criminal justice system that imprisons more people – by far – than any other country.

The National Academy of Sciences recently concluded that America's massive buildup of its prison population over the past four decades, much of it related to the failed war on drugs, is unprecedented in world history. We now have seven times the number of prisoners we had in 1972 – and a per-capita incarceration rate that ranks No. 1 in the world. Rwanda is a distant second.

Year after year, Alabama leads the way, ranking among the top five states in the percentage of its residents who are locked up.

This is not because Alabamians are more prone to criminality than everyone else in the world. No, it's largely due to overly harsh policing and sentencing policies that send too many people to prison for long periods for drug offenses, parole or probation violations, minor crimes that add up under our Habitual Offender Act, and other nonviolent offenses.

Yet, when it comes to facing up to the cost of their policy decisions, Alabama's politicians stick their heads firmly in the sand – ignoring both the immediate costs of keeping our prisons up to constitutional standards and, importantly, the serious but often hidden social costs that ripple through our economy and our poorest communities.

That's why our prisons today hold nearly double their capacity of prisoners. And it's why the health care system is so inhumane that prisoners are needlessly suffering and dying from the lack of treatment, leading to a recent federal lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The problem with Beason's opinion is that it reflects a simplistic view that Alabama can no longer afford and that is actually exacerbating the problems the criminal justice system seeks to solve.

Let's be clear: No one is talking about allowing dangerous criminals to "roam the communities of Alabama," as Beason puts it.

But this experiment with mass incarceration has failed. It is time for Alabama to take stock, as many other states are now doing. We need a smarter approach – one that uses taxpayer money more efficiently, makes us safer and strengthens our communities.

There are two questions for Alabama.

First, are there punishments besides prison and jail that we can impose that both deter crime and save money? The answer is a resounding yes.

Other states are adopting community corrections programs that cost much less than prisons while providing the rehabilitative services, education and job training needed so people do not reoffend.

The second question is: Are people subjected to cruel and degrading conditions in Alabama's prisons better when they return to our communities?

The reality today is that our prisons not only punish people by taking away their freedom but deny their humanity. Prisoners in Alabama spend years or even decades idling away in rat-infested, filthy squalor, where they are preyed upon by other prisoners and guards. They receive little or no education or training, and even those ordered into drug treatment are not able to access it.

We must remember that most prisoners will return to society when they have paid their debt. If we are going to incarcerate them in the first place, isn't it common sense that we want them to be good, productive citizens when they return?

In 2007, tough-on-crime Texas faced an overcrowding problem. Rather than build more prisons, it adopted a reform package that focused on diverting drug abusers and mentally ill offenders into intensive, community-based treatment programs, built halfway houses and treatment centers instead of prisons, and pushed for increased supervision of offenders upon release. The result was that Texas built no new prisons and saved money. And the crime rate dropped, as did the number of offenders committing crimes when they got out.

Let's break from the tired, fear-mongering slogans and failed policies of the past and make Alabama a can-do state that recognizes and fixes its problems.

We have an opportunity to finally reform our prison system and also improve public safety. Let's not blow it.

(Maria Morris is the managing attorney for the Montgomery office of the Southern Poverty Law Center and is leading the SPLC's lawsuit against the Alabama Department of Corrections.)

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